- MANAGEMENT: COLOR SPACES -

A color space relates numbers to actual colors, and is a
three-dimensional object which contains all realizable color
combinations. When trying to reproduce color on another
device, color spaces can show whether you will be able to retain
shadow/highlight detail, color saturation, and by how much either
will be compromised.

TYPES

Color spaces can be either dependent to or independent of a given
device. Device-dependent spaces express color relative to
some other color space, while device-independent color spaces express color in absolute terms. Device-dependent color spaces can
tell you valuable information by describing the subset of colors
which can be shown with a monitor or printer, or can be captured
with a camera or scanner. Devices with a large color space,
or "wide gamut," can realize more extreme colors, whereas the
opposite is true for a device with a narrow gamut color space.

VISUALIZING COLOR SPACES

Each dimension in "color
space" represents some aspect of color, such as lightness,
saturation or
hue, depending on the type of space. The two
diagrams below show the outer surface of a sample color space from
two different viewing angles; its surface
includes the most extreme colors of the space. The vertical
dimension represents luminosity, whereas the two horizontal
dimensions represent the red-green and yellow-blue shift.
These dimensions could also be described using other color properties.

Sample Color Space

(Same Space Rotated 180°)

The above color space is intended to help you qualitatively understand
and visualize a color space, however it would not be very useful for real-world color
management. This is because a color space almost always needs
to be compared to another space. In order to visualize this, color
spaces are often represented by two-dimensional regions.
These are more useful for everyday purposes since they allow you to
quickly see the entire boundary of a given cross-section.
Unless specified otherwise, two-dimensional diagrams usually show the cross-section containing all colors which are at 50% luminance
(a horizontal slice at the vertical midpoint for the color space shown
above).
The following diagram shows three example color spaces: sRGB, Wide
Gamut RGB, and a device-independent reference space. sRGB and
Wide Gamut RGB are two
working spaces
sometimes used for image editing.

2D Color Space Comparison

(Colors at 50% Luminance)

What can we infer from a 2D color space comparison?
Both the black and white outlines show the subset of colors which
are reproducible by each color space, as a fraction of some
device-independent reference space. Colors shown in the
reference color space are only for qualitative visualization, as
these depend on how your display device renders color. In
addition, the reference space almost always contains more colors
than can be shown on a computer display.

For this particular diagram, we see that the "Wide Gamut RGB" color space contains
more extreme reds, purples, and greens, whereas the "sRGB" color
space contains slightly more blues. Keep in mind that this
analysis only applies for colors at 50% luminance, which is what
occupies the midtones of an
image histogram. If we were interested in the color gamut for the
shadows or highlights, we could look at a similar 2D cross-section
of the color space at roughly 25% and 75% luminance, respectively.

REFERENCE SPACES

What is the device-independent reference space shown above?
Nearly all color management software today uses a
device-independent space
defined by the Commission International de l' éclairage
(CIE) in 1931. This space aims to describe all colors
visible to the human eye based upon the average response from a set
of people with no vision problems (termed a "standard colorimetric
observer").
Nearly all devices are subsets of the visible colors specified by
the CIE (including your display device), and so any representation of this space on a monitor should
be taken as qualitative and highly inaccurate.

The CIE space of visible color is expressed in several common forms:
CIE xyz (1931), CIE L*a*b*, and CIE L u'v' (1976).
Each contains the same colors, however they differ in how they
distribute color onto a two-dimensional space:

CIE xy

CIE a*b*

CIE u'v'

(All color spaces shown are 2D cross-sections at 50% Luminance)

CIE xyz is based on a direct graph of the original X, Y and Z
tristimulus functions created in 1931.
The problem with this representation is that it allocates too much
area to the greens. CIE L u'v' was created to correct for this
distortion by distributing colors roughly proportional to their
perceived color difference. Finally, CIE L*a*b* transforms the
CIE colors so that they extend equally on two axes-- conveniently
filling a square. Furthermore, each axis in L*a*b* color space
represents an easily recognizable property of color, such as the
red-green and blue-yellow shifts used in the 3D visualization above.

WORKING SPACES

A working space is used in image editing programs (such as Adobe
Photoshop), and defines the set of colors available to work
with when performing any image editing. Two of the most
commonly used working spaces in digital photography are Adobe RGB
1998 and sRGB IEC61966-2.1. For an in-depth comparison for
each of these color spaces, please see
sRGB vs. Adobe RGB 1998.

Why not use a working space with the widest gamut possible? It
is generally best to use a color space which contains all colors
which your final output device can render (usually the printer), but
no more. Using a color space with an excessively wide gamut can increase the
susceptibility of your image to
posterization.
This is because the bit depth
is stretched over a greater area of colors, and so fewer bits are available to
encode a given color gradation.